Collaborative Research: The Mapping of American Legislatures

美国政治日益两极分化，引起了学者、记者和公众越来越多的关注。对日益加剧的党派和意识形态冲突的担忧，引发了关于美国政府的代表性、问责制和有效性的重要问题。尽管关注程度很高，但对两极分化的原因和后果的学术知识有限。这种粗略的理解尤其适用于对民选官员两极分化的研究，这些研究几乎完全集中在美国国会。尽管在这方面已经做了许多关于两极分化的重要工作，但对参众两院两极分化历史的审查只能提供一个关于两极分化的原因及其影响的有限视角。然而，州立法机构几乎是研究政治两极分化的理想场所。各国不仅在其公民的意见和态度方面存在差异，而且在可能导致更多或更少党派冲突的选举和立法背景方面也存在差异。然而，到目前为止，对国家政治的此类研究一直受到两个问题的阻碍。首先，唱名投票的数据--用于衡量两极分化的标准指标--并不普遍可用。其次，在有这样的数据的地方，极化测量在各州之间是不可比的。该项目中的调查人员为这两个问题提出了解决方案，并创建了各个州立法者的意识形态措施，这些措施随着时间的推移、跨州和与美国国会具有可比性。这些措施又被用来评估每个州立法机构内部的两极分化程度。初步发现，两极分化的程度存在很大差异。一些州显示出两党之间的意识形态差异很小，而另一些州的特点是意识形态上的明显分歧。该项目还表明，两极分化在不同的州随着时间的推移而发生不同的演变。虽然两极分化在大多数州的立法机构中都有所增加，但在其他州的立法机构中，两极分化保持不变或缩小。这一提议的学术价值有两个方面。首先，现有的个人和总体意识形态偏好的衡量标准将得到大幅增强，并与地区和州的人口统计和选举数据挂钩。其次，该项目将支持应用新措施研究长期存在的政治问题的多项研究。这些谜题包括两极分化的原因和后果，公民和代表之间的多重关系，以及各州不同政策选择的制度和意识形态基础。该项目做出了几项贡献。它将产生三个公开可访问的数据集，涵盖所有50个州：立法点名数据，只有今天才能获得的1999-2000年；立法者意识形态的估计；以及政治两极分化和意识形态冲突的衡量标准。这三个数据集对学者、从业者、记者和公众都有许多用途。在此过程中，该项目将促进参与研究项目的研究生的专业化。最后，政策制定者和记者将对体制改革和意识形态冲突之间的关系有更多的了解。

The increasing polarization of US politics has drawn a growing amount of attention from scholars, journalists, and the public. Concerns about increasing levels of partisan and ideological conflict have raised important questions about representativeness, accountability, and effectiveness of the American government.Despite the level of attention, scholarly knowledge of the causes and consequences of polarization is limited. This sketchy understanding is especially true of research on the polarization of elected officials, which has focused almost exclusively on the US Congress. Although much important work has been done on polarization in that context, examination of the history of polarization in the House and Senate provides only a limited perspective on the causes of polarization and its effects. State legislatures, however, are an almost ideal setting for studying political polarization. States vary not only with respect to opinions and attitudes of their citizens, but also with respect to the electoral and legislative contexts that might contribute to greater or lesser partisan conflict. Yet such research on state politics has been hampered by two problems to date. First, the data on roll call voting--used in standard measures of polarization--are not generally available. Second, where such data are available, polarization measures are not comparable across states. The investigators in this project propose a solution to both problems and create ideological measures of individual state legislators that are comparable over time, across states, and with the US Congress. These measures are in turn used to assess the level of polarization within each state legislature. Preliminary findings establish wide variation in the extent of polarization. Some states show very little ideological difference between the two parties, while others are marked by a pronounced ideological divide. The project also demonstrates that polarization has evolved differently over time in different states. While polarization has grown in most state legislatures, it has remained constant or diminished in others. The intellectual merits of this proposal are twofold. First, existing measures of individual and aggregate ideological preferences will be substantially augmented and linked to district and state demographic and electoral data. Second, this project will support multiple studies applying the new measures to study longstanding political questions. These puzzles include the causes and consequences of polarization, the multiple relationships between citizens and representatives, and the institutional and ideological underpinnings of differing policy choices across the states.The project makes several contributions. It will yield three publicly accessible datasets ranging over all 50 states: legislative roll call data, which is only available today for 1999-2000; estimates of legislator ideology; and measures of political polarization and ideological conflict. All three data sets have numerous uses for scholars, practitioners, journalists, and the public. Along the way, the project will advance the professionalization of graduate students who participate in the research projects. Finally, policymakers and journalists would acquire additional insight into the relationship between institutional reform and ideological conflict.